Thankful for Philo

Philomusica, like most choirs, have been through a lot over the past few years. Yeah. Yeah. We all have. It’s been hard! Philomusica Choir has navigated through multiple ups and downs. We celebrated 50 years with commissioned work by Norman Noll and a visit from our founder, Rosemarie Noone. During the pandemic, Philomusica created two virtual concerts, singing separately and merging electronically in collaboration with visual artists. What a weird, sometimes desperately sad, and, once we had a final result, accomplished feeling. Our accompanist of 15 years and world class organist, Shea Velloso, chose to move on to parenting and a more challenging work environment. We mourned the death of singers and long time friends of Philomusica. Dennis Boyle, our director for nearly 40 years, retired. Dennis Boyle led Philomusica at Avery Fisher Hall, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and Canterbury Cathedral in the UK. What a legacy! We hired a new director, the young, fabulous Emma Daniels, and So Jung Lee, an accomplished pianist. Fantastic ups and tragic lows. Crescendos and decrescendos.

Being in a choir, being a member of Philomusica, has made losses and difficult changes more manageable. Rehearsing and performing music is at once timeless and ephemeral. The experience you get singing a piece of music hundreds of years old is never sung or played the same twice. There’s a thrill in learning a newly composed piece and feeling like an artist with a fresh canvas. In choir, we learn to breathe productively, we breathe together. We work towards a goal together, crescendo, and decrescendo with the conductor’s choreographed movement. We move from sight reading music to improving and almost memorizing to performance and then we move on to the next semester. There’s a kind of magic that happens, physically and mentally, in choral singing. It can be very healing to go through all of that learning and breathing and singing and building to a performance and letting it go together. Crescendo, descrescendo. Breathe.

Choir, at it’s best, is a community. The care and friendship developed in weekly rehearsals resonates at times of sorrow and times of joy. Before Monday’s “dress” rehearsal, I spoke to Dennis Boyle who was excited to hear about the amazing Emma Daniels, who is so passionate about choral music and about building and maintaining a choral community. Shea Velloso, our long time friend, is with us again to perform for our concerts on Dec 3 and 4. Brandon Gaines, baritone soloist, has returned for another gig with Philomusica and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have him back. We have new singers, new guest artists, and singers that have been with us for nearly 50 years, and generations in between. I hope I’m still singing with Philomusica years from now. I know that choir will be a place where I can feel comforted during the hard times and will feel buoyed when I’m joyous. We’ll celebrate our history while embracing the new, never singing it exactly the same way twice. Crescendo, decrescendo. Breathe.
From our Philo-family to all of you, we wish you joy, solace, community, and beautiful music.